Well, have a good looksie at what has just arrived in the mail from Harper in the US of A – and no tariffs attached, as far as we can tell. Marble Hall Murders is the third book in the Susan Ryeland series by British author Anthony Horowitz. Following on from Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, it continues the crime-solving partnership between the real fictional mystery book editor Susan Ryeland and the fictional fictional detective Atticus Pünd.
On the face of it, that makes little sense, so here’s the skinny. Susan is a fictional character in the here and now, who has edited a bestselling mystery series by Alan Conway. And the books she has edited feature a master detective called Atticus Pünd, who is similar in many ways to Hercule Poirot.
In the line of duty, Susan has previously solved the murder of Alan Conway himself, as well as another murder, upon which Conway based one of his earlier stories. As Susan detects, she is occasionally visited by Mr Pünd, whose own case, set sometime back in the 1950s or so, pootles along in her imagination. Atticus is there with words of advice. If you’ve seen the excellent TV adaptations of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders made by the BBC, or read the novels, you’ll know just how good these stories are.
What is Marble Hall Murders about?
In her third outing, Susan is back in London and continues to work as a freelance book editor. Horowitz loves to poke around amongst the inner workings of the publishing industry. Here, just as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander has been written by other authors under a licensing agreement since Larsson’s death, so Atticus Pünd is to return. His next story will be penned by Eliot Crace, an author Susan doesn’t rate. However, she has been chosen to edit the book as she know’s Conway’s character inside out.
Crace brings intrigue beyond the pages of his Pünd novel. He’s the grandson of a children’s author, Miriam Crace. He believes his grandmother was murdered, and it’s the 20th anniversary of her death as this story beings.
Meanwhile, the book itself is set in the South of France and, as she corrects it, Susan starts to identify similarities between what Pünd is dealing with and what’s happening in the present day. Is Crace trying to point to whomever murdered his grandma in the pages of his book? There’s plenty of friction, a drop or two of poison, and a great deal of peril for Susan on the way!
Marble Hall Murders is out now in the UK from Penguin, and arrives 13 May in the US. We’ve begun reading it, and equally can’t wait for the TV adaptation when it arrives. Don’t know about you, but we think it’s quite easy to visualise Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan in the main roles while reading the novels.
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I just finished reading Marble Hall Murders and it seems to me that it’s not at the same level of the previous two Magpie Murders books. I think it’s written quickly, without the usual Horowitz accuracy in setting up a plot. Maybe the author was too busy in the making of the second season of the tv series??